“Here for Now,” “Driving My Friend to St. Paul and Back at Night,” “One Long Love Letter,” and “Whatever Things are of Good Report” by J.P. White appeared in Issue 36 and can be found here.
We’d love to hear a little more about “Here for Now.”
Miami is nothing if not a never-ending chain of collisions. With a cup of coffee or a mojito in hand, you can see these collisions everywhere: little art deco hotels from the 20s and monster condo buildings that never should have been built; cigarette boats and oil tankers; the forever bikini young and the staggering old. Love all that and the enduring beauty of the tamanu trees that are found only in Miami and may live longer than any of the other collisions there. I wanted to honor those trees in the midst of all that collision.
What was the most difficult part of that piece?
Staying in one of those lovely art deco hotels costs a fortune. Saving enough money so you can stay a while is challenging and essential. Poems always seem to emerge by staying in one place long enough for everything to slow down. You need to walk or bike in old Miami. You need time.
Recommend a book for us which was published within the last decade.
Anything by the late great Linda Gregg is always submerging and isn’t that what we want? A deep dive with little possibility of escape? Her best poems can be read once or a hundred times and will not be exhausted.
If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?
Nearly all of the writers I turn to with frequency are no longer with us. Having said that, a glass of wine with Elizabeth Strout would be most welcome. She delivers sentence fragments that contain novels. That voice of hers, so intimate, so disconnected. How can you not warm to it?
What are you working on now? What’s next?
I write both prose and poetry. I am working on a novel/memoir/meditation/reflection on death and dying. All my many encounters and how no one ever escapes.
Our thanks to J.P. for taking the time to answer a few questions and share these poems. Read “Here for Now,” “Driving My Friend to St. Paul and Back at Night,” “One Long Love Letter,” and “Whatever Things are of Good Report” here: https://www.sequestrum.org/poetry-by-j-p-white.
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J.P. White has published essays, articles, fiction, reviews, interviews and poetry in many places including The Nation, The New Republic, The Gettysburg Review, Agni Review, Catamaran, APR, Salamander, Catamaran, North American Review, Shenandoah, The Georgia Review, Southern Review, The Massachusetts Review, Water-Stone, The New York Times, Willow Springs, Crazyhorse, Peripheries, and Poetry (Chicago). His sixth book of poems, A Tree Becomes a Room, was winner of the White Pine Poetry prize selected by Denusha Lemeris. His second novel, The Last Tale of Norah Bow, ill be published in 2024 by Regal House Publishing. He is the editor-at-large for Plant-Human Quarterly.